


Mama’s Apple Knife

by jujulica



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: 2nd POV, 2nd Person, Child Adaar, Gen, Parental Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-13
Updated: 2018-08-13
Packaged: 2019-06-26 17:57:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15668322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jujulica/pseuds/jujulica
Summary: Mama peels apples with her knife. Sometimes she carves wooden trinkets. Her mouth is scarred, her horns cut off. Papa bakes you Orlesian pastries. A 2nd person POV child mage Adaar story.





	Mama’s Apple Knife

Mama’s hands are never still. They tinker and they fidget. Always she hold small trinkets in her hands, carving little figures out of wood with a small sharp knife. Sometimes she turns the knife to apples, their peel falling to the ground in one long uninterrupted swirl. Other times her hands are quick in your hair, twisting braids and knots into complex patterns. They twitch at times, pulling at your skull, but you don't mind because she speaks to you, some words you know by heart and some you know only as the barest of ideas. 

Scars line her mouth, pock at even intervals and three great gashes across her lips. Her horns are gone at the base, hacked off long ago. Her arms are always bare, even in the cold when you line your own arms with cloth and furs. 

The others say a hornless qunari demands the greatest fear, and one whose horns are cut—you do not find out what this means until later. 

Instead, you find the fear humans have of your father's long horns, your own short horns that are yet small bumps. 

Your hands run along your father's long curved horns and you wonder if it hurt when they cut off your mother's horns. But you never ask. 

 

The others have no other your age children among the tal vashoth. Babies, a few. And well, rather there was one only slightly older than you but they left and they didn't like you much. 

Instead you play by yourself. Those bushes there are your enemies and the rocks there your allies. You battle, form peace treaties, and create a peaceful agricultural society whose currency are smooth river pebbles. 

Later, papa comes and takes you to the city. Only a few of the others come with because it is well known large numbers of qunari scare the humans. You come to the city to trade and buy supplies. Mama sells her wooden trinkets. This a toy horse, that a wooden soldier. Once, a tiny dragon with horns like papa’s. You lament when someone offers coin for it. 

 

“Isn't it wonderful?” papa grins, presenting pastries on the table. He baked them himself, agonizing in detail over the instructions written on a scrap of stained parchment. 

You stare at the assortment doubtfully. Many are lumpy and misshapen and brown, unlike the Orlesian pastries you saw in the market last week. Papa had assured you he could do the same and the results lie before you. 

Mama doesn't look up from her seat by the window, her hands busy carving the peel off an apple. She's almost done and the peel has settled in her lap in a long, uninterrupted ribbon. 

“Papa they look yummy,” you say and reach for the closest lump. 

If he could grin any wider his face would break. “Happy name day!” he cries as you take a small nibble. The pastry crumbles in your mouth, and sugar overwhelms your tongue, slightly burnt and smoky. 

“It’s good,” you say, and papa scoops you into his arms. You almost drop the pastry but manage to keep a grip. “Probably sweeter than those Orlesian cookies, anyways.” 

Papa beams, and when mama offers you a slice of her apple, it tastes sharp and sour against the sweetness of papa’s pastry. 

Three weeks later, the air tastes sharp and sour when you call lighting from the sky to the earth, and mama sees this and cries. She grips you tight by your shoulders, and you see the fire running in her veins, her bones, your own, as tears stream down her face. 

Ten years after that, you tuck mama’s apple knife into your belt and when the sky splits open at the Temple of Sacred Ashes, you remember the fire in your veins.

**Author's Note:**

> I notice some of the inquisitor’s outfits has what looks like a tiny useless looking knife on the back of the belt, so...


End file.
